Purevpn No Logs – PureVPN Review – 2019

BackgroundPurevpn No Logs

PureVPN has been providing VPN services because 2007, so It’s not surprising that it now claims a long list of features: 2,000+ self-managed servers across 180+ locations, a wide selection of protocols, torrent service, DNS and IPv6 leak protection, a wise kill switch, five apparatus allowed and payment via Bitcoin should you need it. Purevpn No Logs

Unusual Extras include’split tunneling’ (you decide which traffic goes through the VPN, and which uses your ISP) and also the capacity to produce an instant Wi-Fi VPN hotspot in your laptop, and connect even more devices through that.

The Company offers dedicated apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and Linux, extensions for Chrome and Firefox, and much more downloads and tutorials that will help you set it up on routers, Kodi, Android TV, Amazon’s Fire TV Stick and much more.

PureVPN PureVPN subscription options:

12 month program – $5.75 a month ($69 total cost)

The Monthly strategy is typical value at $11 (#8.40), however, the yearly program is merely a monthly $2.99 (#2.30), a excellent deal.

This Drops to a monthly $1.32 (#1) should you pay for five years upfront, a total of $79 (#61). We would suggest registering for that long, but the cost is really low, you may think it’s rewarding. Private online Access offers a decent two-year plan for $2.91 (#2.24) per month, for instance, but that’s still $70 (#54) in total, less. If you only use PureVPN for a couple of decades, you’re getting value.

The By utilizing some marketing trickery, company spoils this fantastic impression a little. Each plan has a’last sold’ indicator which tells you if a person signed up, and it.

This is Presumably intended to show you the service is, but we are not sure the amounts are genuine. We refreshed the page a few times, and visited in different browsers, and the’past sold’ figures varied widely. They behave like they’re chosen randomly, rather than corresponding to any real world events.

PureVPN does not advertise a trial. We dug deep and found a page for something called a’3-day trial account’, but that is somewhat misleading. It is really only a commercial program in which you pay a non-refundable $2.50 (#2) for 3 days of support.

There’s a 31-day money-back guarantee for your . PureVPN’s refund policy utilized to include some sneaky circumstances where you wouldn’t get your money back if you’d connected more than 100 times, or used over 3GB of data transport, but we’re happy to observe these happen to be dropped. It is currently promoted as a’no questions asked, risk-free, stress-free’ money-back guarantee, so if you are unhappy, just send an email and ask for a refund. Purevpn No Logs

Apps

Handing Over your cash to PureVPN is remarkably simple, as the company supports just about every payment format there is: credit card, PayPal, Bitcoin and several different cryptocurrencies (via CoinPayments), AliPay, assorted gift cards, and more than 150 additional payment methods via the Paymentwall platform.

After Parting with your money, download links direct you to programs for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android, the browser extensions and much more. We grabbed the Windows client, also as it had been downloading, a email came with login details.

Installation Was simple, and after a quick launch, the Windows client prompted us to pick one of five modes: Stream, Internet Freedom, Security/Privacy, File Sharing and Dedicated IP. We guess most people will wonder if to choose Security/Privacy or Internet Freedom, and there’s no advice to explain the difference.

The Support site told us that selecting a manner would optimize PureVPN’s settings for this undertaking. File Sharing manners and the Streaming would optimize for speed, although As an instance, choosing Security/Privacy would prioritize security above all else.

VPN Beginners might appreciate this strategy since it means that they don’t need to know and tweak the settings. Since there’s no obvious indication of what each mode does but specialists are not as inclined to approve. There’s nothing wrong with task-based mode choice, but we would like a clear display of those settings that are unsuitable for each mode, so experienced users can comprehend the effects of their choice.

After Selecting a mode, you’re in a position to pick at locations. This has lots of functionality, enabling you to navigate locations by cities or countries, search by name, view ping times, or create favorites for quick recall afterwards.

Alternatively, Deciding upon a Goal option displays a list of tasks you may want to execute — unblocking Netflix or other streaming sites, utilizing VoIP, accessing social media websites or whatever — and you can in theory select one of these, and allow PureVPN to select a server for you.

Connect To the client and a host displays your connection status. There is also an optional bandwidth chart showing your data transfers for the past few seconds. You won’t need it, but it’s good to see PureVPN making the effort.

The Client makes clever of use of alarms to be certain you know what’s happening. Choose a place as long as the Windows client is the foreground program, it won’t waste your time with notifications. But if you switch to another program, the customer notices, and a window seems to let you know when it connects and disconnects.

A bonus Gravity feature blocks access. We would always prefer to purchase this type of attribute from a professional security firm, but Gravity is a lot smarter than the majority of the VPN-related competition. In addition to blocking dangerous links, it can turn on Safe Search for the main search engines, block entire categories of site, whitelist websites you always wish to access, and blacklist sites you do not. Oh, and it may block ads, also. Purevpn No Logs

The Settings Box is a highlight, especially for experienced users, since it stuffed with intriguing and unusual extras.

The Customer does have options to launch as an example, auto-connect and system start. As soon as you’re protected it may automatically open your default browser.

Need a Different protocol? PureVPN allows you to Pick from OpenVPN TCP/UDP, PPTP, L2TP, SSTP and IKEV. There’s also an automated alternative which the customer suggests offers the very best speed and security, but from what we could see, that is not true: it just cycles through another protocols till it finds one that works.

Split Tunneling allows you to send only specified apps’ traffic by your VPN. That requires more time to install, and you have to be very certain which apps you need to redirect, but it can additionally optimize performance by limiting your data transfer needs.

The VPN Hotspot is an additional, configuring a wireless hotspot which turns the host computer to a restricted VPN router. When it’s enabled, you’ll have the ability to use your phone, tablet or other devices to go online via the host’s PureVPN connection.

Along with the List continues, using IPv6 leak security, an unusually configurable kill switch, and a multi-port alternative which chooses the very best port, avoiding any closed or throttled options. You can elect to use a non-NAT network to get a special IP address, port forwarding is available should you require it, and a Support section does not only link to the site: it eases creating a service ticket from inside the customer.

Even though There’s lots of power , the interface is a mess that is inconsistent and awkward. There are normal buttons, radio buttons, links, icons and sidebars, they do not necessarily work as you’d expect, and although we figured out how to navigate across the machine, it never felt natural or comfortable.

Still, The client did a decent job for us, blocking DNS and WebRTC escapes, and together with the kill button successfully killing our net access if the VPN link dropped. If you will use some of the client added features, it may appeal.

We took a Look at PureVPN’s Android app, and it had been the same story as the Windows version. After choosing a’Mode’ (still not certain why), we were able to select cities, states, or choose a Goal (optimized for China, unblock this or that streaming assistance, etc ). It is more awkward to use than the VPN app, but you will find it out easily enough.

What’s More interesting is that the Android program does not drop the majority of choices and the desktop’s settings, which is what we normally see. It has a very similar feature set, including a choice of protocol (OpenVPN TCP/UDP or IKEv2), a kill switch, split tunneling, port forwarding, Gravity URL filtering, and more. If you will utilize some or all of that functionality, it’s well worth a go. Purevpn No Logs

Privacy and logging

In a Previous inspection , we pointed out that PureVPN made a big deal of its’zero log’ policy. Nevertheless, the small print stated there was a session logging, which seemed to add time you connect to a host, your incoming IP address as well as the total bandwidth used.

This Isn’t a detail. In October 2017 reports emerged of a guy being detained on suspicion of running”an extensive cyberstalking campaign”, in part based on PureVPN records demonstrating that its services were accessed from originating IPs such as the accused man’s home and workplace. The’zero log’ VPN kept some sort of logs, after all, and these were able to help connect internet actions to a particular account.

PureVPN Type of responded to this in a blog Post, where the company pointed out that it didn’t keep full logs, like your browsing history, and it had not done anything to violate its privacy policy, where the session logging was cited.

This Does not tackle the dilemma of why the company described itself as maintaining’zero logs’ in the primary part of the website, however, when this turned out not to be entirely correct. That’s also not a point. Logging policies are based almost entirely on trust, and a VPN isn’t inclined to be trusted if it is seen to mislead consumers or bury the fact of a situation from the small print.

PureVPN has updated its privacy Coverage, which now includes probably the most explicit no-logging sentence we have ever observed:’we don’t keep any record of your surfing activities, link logs, documents of this VPN IPs assigned to you, your original IPs, your relationship time, the history of your surfing, the websites you visited, your incoming traffic, the information or information you obtained, or the DNS queries generated by you personally.’

The Policy also explains the minimum link data it will report –‘We know the day you connected to some particular VPN place and from that Internet Service Provider’ — also covers plenty of other vital issues in a clear and readable way.

Then, the Fantastic news, is that PureVPN’s current Privacy policy looks good and says the right things. It is much better than the majority of the contest. But the catch is that the previous logging story will understandably lead some people to wonder whether they can trust what the provider says. We can’t tell you what to believe, but it’s well worth checking out both PureVPN’s unique site defense and also its current privacy policy before you make up your mind.

Netflix

PureVPN Creates more of an effort to support website unblocking than most of the contest. The company doesn’t just make airy promises on the website then forget about them later, it includes special support for streaming within its programs, in theory allowing you to get Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, BBC iPlayer and a host of different services from where you are on the planet. Purevpn No Logs

We Double-clicked that the BBC option, and viewed as the customer connected and exhibited an’err-network-changed’ message. What? This seemed like a serious difficulty, however, the browser had just detected the change in our network settings as the customer connected, and once this was complete, the BBC iPlayer website opened and streamed content as usual.

It was The exact same story with Netflix. The customer started our browser before the link was complete, thus we saw the exact same error message, but this vanished mechanically, and we were free to navigate and flow whatever Netflix content we enjoyed.

You’re Not restricted to the professional services built into PureVPN’s programs , naturally. Linking to a US server in the manner got us , although youTube wasn’t included for instance.

Performance

Our Normal performance evaluations involve running custom software which connects to numerous servers, checking place , ping time, rates and much more. Unfortunately, we could not get this working with PureVPN, or determine why (whether that is our fault or theirs, we can’t be convinced ).

But An warning in the print explains that consumers aren’t permitted to have more than 200 sessions every day if we did. That won’t concern most people, but it will become a problem when you are running VPN benchmarks. Purevpn No Logs

We dropped Back on our older manual way of linking via customers and assessing the results from various speed checking sites, such as SpeedTest.net, Fast.com and TestMy.net. This will not provide us as much data to use, but there’s still enough to get a feel for exactly what the service can provide.

Our local UK servers diverse but still gave quite decent rates of 50-65Mbps on our evaluation connection that was 75Mbps to us.

Near Speeds were mildly below average. Netherlands connections can deliver substantially the same speeds for us as UK servers, but they were typically 35-45Mbps.

US Performance ranged from approximately 30Mbps in the west shore, on the east to 50Mbps. That is far from the fastest we have seen, but unless you are likely 24 hours of intensive torrenting, it’s probably not likely to cause you any issues.

As usual, Speeds tailed off radically for the places. By way of instance, New Zealand averaged 12Mbps, Vietnam was 10Mbps, 1Mbps was reached by Taiwan, also China ranged down to a slow speed that the web benchmarking websites often stalled mid-test. That places the magnitude of PureVPN’s system into perspective (having loads of servers doesn’t matter whether many are unusably slow), but if you’re only planning to utilize the major locations, it won’t matter very much.

On a few Occasions, our PureVPN Windows customer was not able to link to our test server that is chosen. The Cancel button didn’t work, however, the problem here is that the connection didn’t time out for several moments, although that is not uncommon.

What You Want To Know About PureVPN

The Test of Speed — Just How Quick is PureVPN?

Let’s start off by making one thing clear, i.e. whatever VPN service you use, the online speed will take a hit. That strike is a result of the security measures employed to encrypt and protect your identity. The majority of VPN services make every possible effort to ensure that the hit is as gentle as it can be. So, unlike what many folks are going to have you think like utilizing dial-up, it’s not likely to be.

PureVPN, compared to other similar VPN services, appears to be much quicker. So it does live up to the promise of being the fastest in the business. Purevpn No Logs

The way we tested the operation was by using Ookala’s nifty speed testing website and program. We ran the speed test on both international and domestic servers. We then compared the results, calculated their portion gap, and that’s how we found PureVPN to be quicker.

PureVPN includes a national latency of a mere 6.7% percent. During our downloading evaluations, as a matter of fact, PureVPN improved speeds that by our calculations is an incredible 346 percent percent. We discovered that competing VPN services were substantially slower. Some we suspect were throttling download speeds because they didn’t want to stress their servers.

Once it comes to uploads, PureVPN didn’t really boost it did with downloads, but it took a mere 4.5percent percent hit. If anything this is still one of the upload scores we’ve seen from a VPN provider.

Throughout our international speed tests, the latency increased by 200%. Though download rates have been still a whopping 403.8percent better than some of the competing products I tested it against. The uploads have been 22.7% percentage slower which is second best compared to possibly Hotspot Shield which enhanced the upload rate by 1.4% percent.

A Mind-Blowing Number of Servers

The map on the left lets you bypass the software’s default recommendation and choose a server on your own. Remember that by default PureVPN chooses the server which is often the one. When in China I discovered that it kept picking up servers in Hong Kong by default which is not nearby but also the simple fact that the cyberspace of Hong Kong is not as rigorously censored as mainland China.

PureVPN has over 2000 servers which are dispersed across 140 countries and 180 locations around the globe. Servers are located in Asia, Central America, South America, North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. You may believe that PureVPN only has servers in nations which don’t censor or block sites, but you would be wrong. Servers in Russia, Turkey, and China are there in case you wanted them.

It Does Not Slow Down Your Internet

Over time VPN providers, generally speaking, have received bad press for infamously slowing down internet rates that users have never been pleased with clearly. There are still many VPN services that slow down what might be internet. Fortunately, with PureVPN that is not the case even if you use it to stream Netflix, YouTube, etc..

Along with not slowing down your net, PureVPN offers a number of other features like robust servers that can be found around the globe and which scored tremendously throughout our speed tests. Then there is also the fact that they utilize military-grade encryption, together with programs for Android and iOS apparatus. Even though there are many more reasons to think about PureVPN as we’ll examine in detail below. Purevpn No Logs

Excellent Set of Features and Easy to Understand

I’ve used dozens of VPN programs over the years, and PureVPN is like a breath of fresh air. It is easy to use and compared to the previous time that I used the program its now geared towards people who are new to using VPNs. As soon as PureVPN loads you’re prompted to pick from five choices, i.e. Safety, Internet Freedom, Stream, Remote/Dedi IP (this feature gives you a dedicated IP) and File Sharing. An experience that is based on the option selected is then delivered by the app.

The other thing I enjoy about PureVPN is that every one of the features are to the stage. For instance, their Internet Freedom feature enables you to choose what region you need to access Netflix out of, such as from the UK, Australia, etc.. Netflix can be also accessed by you from China where it is otherwise blocked.

Compared to the last time I used PureVPN this time around it felt zippier. The interface has been glowing, with vibrant pictures some of that could be hard to read on a smaller screen. Once you’re connected to a server that is private, you are going to see the IP address, connection status, and the length of your session.

The traffic graph gives you a good feel for just how much bandwidth has been absorbed, which is useful for anyone on a metered internet connection. But it’s very important to mention worrying about data caps that PureVPN does not have any. So, you’re just limited to what the ISP has in store for you!

Like many other competing VPN services, you choose the server and the country it’s based in. You can search for servers and then click on them to link. Some servers based on where you’re located are currently going to be faster than others because of latency.

You can also select which protocols to use. Choose between OpenVPN, IKEv2, SSTP, PPTP, and L2TP. There is PureVPN’s very own stealth protocol that according to the provider ensures the anonymity. Since people like me have PureVPN makes it easy by giving a speed and security rating for every. The important thing to notice here is because the security boosts the rate slows down. You’ll need to strike a compromise between both based on what is needed. By default, a protocol is chosen by the software. Most people who do not work for the CIA (pun intended) will probably be fine using the default alternative. Purevpn No Logs

Hands-on and Initial Impressions

We have admittedly used PureVPN earlier, but following a hiatus or perhaps two decades we pretty much forgot how things worked. As soon as you’ve decided to register and download their software, you’ll need to put in your email and select a password. Perhaps confusingly and interestingly, this isn’t what you’ll use to the software to log-in, but it is used for charging purposes.

After subscribers have paid, they get an email with the username and password in plain text. We have utilized other VPNs that use the same system to payment identities that were separate from consumer identities which guarantees anonymity. Nevertheless we believe that it could be perplexing to first-time customers however its something you get used to. Plus, in our experience the email will land for some reason on your spam folder, so make sure before calling service that you check that.

Customer Support

PureVPN has a support Website with a massive number of tutorials and troubleshooting guides. The opening page points you Setup Guide For Users in China and to watch nearly all of these sections, and Netflix US, for instance include more content than you would expect.

The Setup Guide has subsections for Routers Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, Smart TV and Devices, for example, and a number of those sections have more content than the support site of VPNs.

Although it’s an impressive Quantity of work, we’re Unsure how successful and reliable it might be. We assessed the manual OpenVPN setup guide and found it failed entirely. OpenVPN was not installed there weren’t any PureVPN settings files, and there was no information in the manual to help us figure this out.

If the Website can not help, you raise a support ticket from inside the client or can send an email. We took the ticket route and the service done with the support team sending a friendly and helpful response to our evaluation question to us .

Alternatively, Chat can be used by you on the site. We found it might take a minute or two to get a response, and even then, we weren’t given the level of help by the broker since we had received to our email query. PureVPN couldn’t get close to the level of service we had received from leading competitors like ExpressVPN, then, but we are still glad the option is available. With quick service to hand, any live chat issues you might have probably aren’t too important. Purevpn No Logs

Final verdict

PureVPN Comes bundled with a pile of features, which can be surprising considering the purchase price. These do not always work as you might expect and there are tons of usability problems with the programs — but demanding users who will use this degree of VPN power must give PureVPN a look.